HV Lightning Rods

[ghost]

Which modpack version are you using?

2.0.8.8

What do you suggest instead/what changes do you propose?

So I thought hv lightnings were crazy expensive in IV, but they're like.. not that bad. All you need is rhodium-palladium, IV cutter+chem reactor, EV circuit assembler, vanadium-gallium, and synthetic rubber+ptfe, which is really cheap for a machine that gives over 80k eu/t each, forever, with no fuel input. I imagine a preemptive nerf would be good before this becomes the obvious IV-LuV meta.

For background:

Lightning rods work when there is thunder, or when there is rain at 10% efficiency. If they have iron rods from close to bedrock to build limit, they will be struck by lightning nearly every 256 ticks, at which point they will fill their buffer of 50 million eu. This cannot be exploited by player-summoned lightning, but artificially created thunderstorm weather is fine. This can be extracted from at 512a of the specified voltage, but will also decay at 1% per tick, so the power must be extracted immediately using lots of amps of output, typically 64a transformers. 5 64a xformers leads to 320a being a simple amount of power to extract though more might be possible.

I did the math on how much lightnings generate a little while ago, including loss on output from the lightning rod itself, but not including discrepancies due to lightning not actually striking exactly every 256 ticks. Also not including any loss on any transformers etc.

320A out: HV: 88355 eu/t, EV: 143565 eu/t, IV: 177234 eu/t
512A out: HV: 107704 eu/t, EV: 157884 eu/t, IV: 182927 eu/t

I've tested the HV one with 320A out, and it does indeed average over 80k over a decent period of time after three transforms to bring it to an easily storable LuV.

As for the thunder, eio is really cheap but it appears it can't be automated in this minecraft version. However, it can also be trivially done with early Witchery (Rite of Sky's Wrath), which can be automated. The only inputs needed are wooden swords and wood ash.

[ghost]

Oh, and as for the other lightnings -- EV is post fusion and probably ok, and IV needs ultimate batteries (lol) so I don't think that's causing balance issues anytime soon.

[ghost]

aaand also forgot to leave my own suggestion, I think the HV one should be post assline though fusion may be too far. Perhaps some LuV field gens to replace some of the lapo things in the recipe.

[0lafe]

What if we lower thundering output to ~1A EV/IV and keep current recipes? Even with a field gen, doesn't that beat LuV naqs by a bunch?

[ghost]

Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone uses LuV naqs anyways because they need europium so you might as well just do fusion power. But reducing the output could also be a good way to nerf them. A good way to do it imo might be to add a "lightning chance multiplier," separate for the tiers, on how probable it would be for a lightning bolt to actually strike when it normally would now. That would also make lightning a bit less regular which I like because predictable lightning nearly every 256t is stupid.

Maybe:
10% for the HV (bit over iv out)
25% for the EV (bit over luv out)
80% for the IV (bit over zpm out)

... or still too much? Maybe 1/2 that? I think 1/4 that would be enough to totally kill them, and personally I'd like these to be not op but also still a decent option, because I think they use the gt power system in a fairly interesting and unique way by making the player deal with storing a really massive peak power production. You'll most likely need to transform up to at least LuV and store, at least temporarily, in 16x luv batbuffs or similar just to deal with all the peak eu/t from the HV ones. It's also kind of cool for Witchery to have an actual use in tech.

Additionally, if we want these to be like actually balanced, the IV one should probably get a buff; requiring 4 ultimate batteries is kind of a joke. 4 energy modules (purple ones) would fit with the progression of the others and give at least a fighting chance at usability.

[dvdmandt]

I tried these in my world and left one chunk loaded for 24 hours, connected to a molecular transformer which seems capable of extracting the full 512A. The average generation was something like 3000-3500 eu/t per generator, with no artificial weather. But the only reason why that works so well is because I could send it all into the MT. Other than that, it's a really awkward power source. It needs really huge power buffers to be even remotely viable, so you need to take that into account for pricing as well.

Also, while thunderstorms can be automated, keep in mind that it would likely not be very popular in MP, and it would be rather annoying and awkward in SP as well whenever you want to do any exploring etc.

It should be remembered that while it's dubbed a HV generator, it's effectively an EV/IV/LuV generator. It should also be noted that it doesn't scale very well with tiers. The "IV" one is only ~80% better for example.

How does it compare to say wind/water turbines at IV, taking into account costs and average generation?

[dvdmandt]

I just had another thought. Having the lightning bolts as a chance instead of every 256 ticks like we currently have would effectively distribute the bolts a bit over time, making it significantly easier to handle. Having them all spike at once is indeed rather stupid, but it is a significant part of what makes them fun and challenging to use effectively.

[ghost]

I'm not sure what you mean. Making it chance based would reduce the amount of power you actually get, while requiring the same infrastructure to deal with transforming and buffering - less eu/t for the same infrastructure.

As for how it compares to wind and water turbines, it's way better. At IV the top wind kinetic available is the Medium, and crafting it and its generator and iridium rotor requires stacks of iridium, tungstensteel, and stainless, as well several EV, IV, and LuV circuits, as well as a bit of osmiridium so IV energy hatch ebf is required. It outputs around 1.5a-2a IV in normal conditions, but it does also get a boost from the easy witchery thunder (1.25 rain 1.50 thunder, do kinetics users realize this?), so for fairness we should consider about 2.25a-3a IV, which is already kind of a lot for the cost. According to discord peeps water kinetics average much lower at around 1.05a. So the HV lightning at 10-11a IV or more is like 4x as good as the best-case IV kinetic, making it on par with or better than the LuV-tier kinetics despite being significantly cheaper than even IV.

edit: true ideal average for water gens is apparently like 1.4a with 200 blocks ocean in front of the turbine

And as for the inconvenience of having thunder, you can disable weather sounds, and the thunder can also be easily turned off if you ever want to leave the base for an extended period of time, it's no biggie.

[dvdmandt]

If you have multiple lightning rods, having them chance based would mean multiple smaller bursts on average, while the current system yields one huge burst every 256 ticks. For HV, it would on average mean half the buffering, for IV it would mean about 1/10 of the buffering, assuming the average rate would be what it is today.

IMHO, the current implementation is fairly balanced for an IV generator assuming normal weather. Should possibly be slightly more expensive, but the mechanic seems mostly fine to me. As someone who's never really done Witchery, how easy is it to automate thunderstorms? If trivial, could that be made less trivial?

[ghost]

Thunderstorms with witchery are extremely trivial. Depending on how versatile witchery++ is, it might be possible to change the ritual ingredients, if so they could be made into something ZPM tier for balance I suppose, though it would look really silly with every other ritual like early tier vanilla. Could also just be disabled I suppose. However, there are also easy thunder mechanics from eio and blood magic, though as far as I know neither can be automated, and there are also rain mechanics from Forestry (automatic) and Thaumcraft (didn't test). However I don't want mechanics to exist in a way that makes it extremely optimal for the player to have to right click every 10-20 minutes but has no way at all to automate that right click, so with that in mind it would be necessary to nerf or remove those thunder mechanics, and possibly the rain mechanics too, if the rods are left unchanged.

[draknyte1]

Depending on how versatile witchery++ is

It can change anything except the brewing system. So that’s feasible with ease.

[dvdmandt]

Could we somehow tag artificial weather? Or perhaps tag normal weather and respond to that?

IMHO, the way they currently function is pretty cool and fun for normal weather conditions, so I wouldn't want to kill them off for normal conditions just to make them less op under artificial conditions. I do however agree with there being a problem here if that ritual is trivial, and I wouldn't want constant thunderstorms to be the new norm..

[ghost]

Tagging normal weather could be a good solution, though I don't know if it's possible and it would certainly need a coder person to check feasibility/implement. However, with only natural weather the rods are actually kind of worthless, imo -- I'm pretty sure the possibility of magic weather is why they're as expensive as they are, but it just ends up in a weird in-between point where they're useless or op depending on whether the player creates weather.

[dvdmandt]

I don't know, 2500-3000 eu/t is not utterly useless for a fuelless, pollution free and maintenance free power source. What if magic weather would work, just much less efficiently, so that we would get a boost but not 3000+% boost to the average?

[repo-alt]

On the server no one would tolerate somewhat continuous rain btw.

[Prometheus0000]

I can't even tell what you wanted.